Thursday, August 17, 2006

Mother-Daughter Team on Wrong End of Illegal Alien Business

By now most have heard about the arrest and prosecution of a Benton County Revenue Office Clerk who made fake ID's for illegal aliens in exchange for cash. She is now facing a seven year prison term, along with her mother who supplied a steady stream of illegal aliens for customers.

The poor clerk was simply on the wrong end of the "government services to illegal aliens" business. If she had been working at any one of dozens of state government welfare and benefit programs, she could have signed up all the illegal aliens she wanted to get buckets of cash from your pockets without fear of any prosecution whatsoever.

That's right. Currently there is no state law that would allow for prosecution of government workers who knowingly sign up illegal aliens for state welfare benefits and services, even in cases where the law says illegal aliens are not eligible. And if those illegals want to give a gift to their new friend for doing something for which the worker faces no possiblity of legal sanction, who could object? It is the perfect government crime machine just waiting to be turned on in every county welfare office. I suspect the hum of its motors can already be heard if one listens carefully around the state. Unlike the revenue clerk who took money from illegals, there will be no prosecution for the clerks who knowingly defraud the taxpayers by giving your money to them.

So what kind of perverse system sentences a mother-daughter team to prison for taking money from illegals for fake ID's, but does not punish government workers for knowingly giving your money to those same illegal aliens?

This absurdity highlights the need for a bill like Sen. Jim Holt's SB 206. Critics kept screaming that it was already illegal to give most state public assistence benefits to illegals. But even in such cases, those laws have no teeth. There is no penalty for a corrupt government worker to knowingly sign illegals up to receive your tax dollars. SB 206 would have made that a crime, and the ferocity with which it was opposed by some of those same workers can only make you wonder if the revenue clerk in Bentonville was not alone in her activities, just on the wrong side of the business.